


Golden Dandelions

by bee_bro



Series: an end of the world type bouquet [2]
Category: Half-Life
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Gen, M/M, Mute Gordon Freeman, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Canon Fix-It, as much as . .. you can begin fixing it, can be read as a standalone, wht if plot slowed down and let u hug ur homies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:54:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29494638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bee_bro/pseuds/bee_bro
Summary: Gordon spent 20 years helplessly flitting through memories and dreams. Now he's finally awake and everything smells like ashes. And yet, he's not passing up his chances to rough up the local dictatorship first, and get to spend time with those he missed second.(And maybe reexamine his totally platonic yearning towards a certain ex-spy-for-the-resistance.)
Relationships: Barney Calhoun/Gordon Freeman
Series: an end of the world type bouquet [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2166411
Comments: 1
Kudos: 37





	Golden Dandelions

**Author's Note:**

> based on a song and a dream, and a whole ton of hl2 fix-it tropes. 
> 
> once again pt1 isn't required but there's some references to it in here  
> cw for mild unreality and fire/smoke

It starts with Gordon’s two hands and the inexplicable smell that he knows is some sort of flower- a whole field of them- a field that is burning-

Smoke rushes into Gordon’s lungs and he chokes, seizes up on its oily, heavy darkness, but he’s been told something- he needs to _wake up_ and he can’t disagree- he coughs and the smoke is replaced by the smell of a fire’s consequence- why does he know what that smells like? Extinguished campfires? Dry autumns? This is worse, there is no nostalgia to it, just the sense of terrible, irreversible annihilation of everything in the destruction’s wake- he opens his eyes and he’s in a bus? A subway- it does not smell like ashes. It smells like a subway should. Worn leather, oxidized metal, cold.

Someone tells him they didn’t see him board and he can only look at their terribly broken-in jean overalls and smudged hands. Yes, he nods, he didn’t see either. He’s really only beginning to see now.

As he steps off the platform, every sense that isn’t smell and the barest of sight begin to rush up on him- first from a distance and then all at once: the scuffing of shoes, the damp smell of open space in a coldly-humid city, voices, a station broadcast, so much space that humans should occupy and hustle through, late for jobs and eager to get to their trains in time, dodging salesmen and vendors trying to pedal untrustworthy meat pastries- _pain-_

Instead there is floors clean of trash but not free of mold, about five people total, and there is Gordon. He takes a few more steps, his shoes feel old but not familiar, a terribly dissonating feeling that doesn’t strike him as _novel_ \- right, he’d been dreaming- just now- he’d been-

Asleep?

Gone.

He’d been falling, falling, slipping through smooth void with no direction, slipping through the grasp of time.

He stands on the train station’s tiles and looks at his peculiarly unfamiliar shoes. They’re chased by what he can only call an old jean uniform, the same as the men in the train car, then come empty pockets, and the rest of the uniform, jean on jean, his mothers would call it tasteless-

_And they have- they have paused him from leaving the house dressed in a jean jacket with jeans before, only to ask why on gods green earth he would but they’d ultimately let him go because- that’s right, he’d said it was cool and the way they didn’t disagree, smiling, would stick with him- it would- don’t think about it._

Don’t.

The uniform shirt’s sleeves end with two hands he’d like to call his own. He flexes his fingers, right hand almost creaking with the motion, feeling as if old machinery long past its own life expectancy. It’s just one sharp note away from pain.

The rest of him aches, like bones can with a particularly nasty fever, and he's a terrible midground between rested and absolutely drained. 

His palms are dry and when Gordon smells them, they smell of _nothing_. And somehow, that tells him more than any specific scent of blood or ash or metal ever could. He is awake and he has been laundered of his suit and its grime- his suit and its grime-

Black Mesa comes crashing down on Gordon Freeman in reverse order.

The tram with nothing outside its windows. Xen and its hostile inhabitants. Black Mesa hallways and _their_ new hostile inhabitants. The military. Days of fear. Nights of fear. The Resonance Cascade. Walking his merry little cart with the crystal into its intended, dreadful spot, in a room with a ceiling. Being late to work. Falling asleep far too late, texting ‘bye I’m going now’ back and forth with Barney because neither would put their phone down- Cafeteria pizza with Barney, falling asleep on his shoulder as he reads comics out loud, describing all the panels even though Gordon can easily glance down and see for himself- but he doesn’t, he’s just watching track posts whip past the train window as they’re on their forty-minute trip to what’s been lovingly labeled ‘Downtown’ by their colleagues, the nearest city with some restaurants and stores and whatnot- meeting Eli there for drinks- waiting for Barney to browse the _entire_ cowboy boot section and settle on buying sandals.

The images are murky in his mind, like his brain’s rushing in to fill in their missing pieces and Gordon can feel it happen, feel where fictitious memory-tuning mixes with the bare-boned skeletons of what had actually happened- he doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want this rushed glorification of moments that aim to slip through his mind's strainer and get lost forever as half-formed memories only- he brushes over their lines, their edges, Barney’s smile, laugh, hands, scruffy chin, Gordon’s inability to do anything about it.

He snaps back in at maximum velocity and it almost sends him stumbling- since when had he been walking? He doesn’t know. He lets the shoes that are not his carry him through a train terminal he cannot place with directions he cannot read. The sun hits him with its smog-obstructed rays that hold no warmth and Gordon smells damp coble with rotting leaves, nothing earthy about it, nothing welcoming, nothing like a well-tended greenhouse. Just decay.

Societal decay too, he comes to learn.

Or rather, he is hastily taught.

He is herded through the mummified remnants of rooms and streets with dead, useless traffic lights, staring back with empty sockets that no longer color-code order. No longer point when to go and where to: Gordon has to figure that one out on his own. Or race to have the chance to do so- a battle he ultimately loses when taken hostage-

The police are uniformic and their factory-identical masks make them feel far more like a single entity than any dress code ever could. They’re alone in a room now and Gordon’s gonna test his chances with a one-on-one, even if out-weaponed and out- _powered,_ by the look of the soldier’s shoulders- or is that padding? One way to find out-

The moment Gordon takes his first step into combat, the mask is pulled up .

The face underneath is _tired,_ tired more than anyone should ever be, yet already sporting the confused, disbelieving beginnings of a smile. Like someone spilled ink into clear water: the smile grows, unevenly and almost like it’s forgotten how-

Barney’s grinning.

“Doc…”

Barney’s name feels somehow rusty to sign, his hands protest but do their job. Barney. They shape his name: _Barney. Barney. Barney._

The room smells like old blood but Gordon feels like he can finally breathe easier, taking the two, three steps separating them, scooping a far less-lanky Barney into a hug, right under the armpits. There’s a mild noise of surprise, and then a long, weighted sigh that leaves Barney heavy in his arms. But gloved hands come up to squeeze Gordon back, and boy do they squeeze.

Barney’s saying something, talking, and Gordon basks in it, closes his eyes, presses his face into Barney’s shoulder, where the pressure of it makes his blackened vision dance with patterns and colors, and then memories of every hug they'd shared, flickering past and through the sensation of being held, elated hugs over won bets, goodbye hugs, falling asleep on the same couch hugs, the kinds of hugs that aim to heal damage done by bad news.

The _you’re fucking alive I don’t know what’s going on but you’re alive_ hugs.

When he learns Isaac and Eli are alive he hopes he’ll make it long enough to hug them too, cause sometimes that’s the biggest, fastest way to convey far too many words.

He has a long, terribly long day- or _few_ days ahead of him, he can feel it begin dragging on his shoulders, some knowledge that seeps through the fabric of what he should know and what he shouldn’t. Before there was a clear divide, for a simple human chained in place by linear time. Barney's graying hair and new scars tell him: not anymore, not for you. Your image of hope may belong to the world, but _you_ no longer belong _anywhere._

Being displaced runs cracks through that inborn, stable foundation. This time what spreads like ink in clear, unmuddied water, is that an utmost certainty of: Gordon Freeman is about to face a new breed of hell all over again. And understanding of what's to come. The purest extract of foreboding doom.

It spreads and curls through his self awareness and it’s what gives him the piece of mind to let Barney go. Because if he doesn’t _now,_ he might just stay in the embrace forever and damn them both.

He pulls back and Barney isn’t crying, but Gordon cups his face and traces it with is thumbs anyway, because there’s really nothing else he can think to say. Other than whatever _this_ is conveying- he doesn’t know. He just understands: I should have done this sooner. There is a scar under his right thumb.

For some reason, Gordon thinks: maybe if I _had_ done this sooner, none of this would’ve happened.

It’s a silly notion.

Barney and Alyx are snapping the clasps of his new, much lighter, much more battle-ready HEV suit into locks. Barney hovers in front of him, “Stay safe out there.”

Four words with too much meaning behind them. _Interpretation: this is no longer a world you can use those words carelessly in. So Barney says them with care._

Gordon has nothing to answer to that, shrugs, winces, his hands are busy for a moment with gloves. Barney only continues.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, Doc. Just. Don’t go out there dying on us. Nothing reckless. Gordon.” _interpretation_ : _don’t die on me._ They both know he will disregard the last bit. "Stay safe."

His hands are now free, if not of gloves but of Alyx’s fastening, and so he lifts them, “Back at you, all of you.” _Interpretation_ : _I miss everyone, terribly, you all slipped through my fingers in my dreams and I’m not about to let the same happen here, awake._

Barney chuckles. _Interpretation_ : _he is afraid, he cannot make promises like that._ “We’ll do our best.”

“I’ll do my best as well.”

_No interpretation needed._

**Author's Note:**

> well hello hello whats that? ch2 is already being written? unbelievable. legendary. lets hope it comes out in a timely manner.


End file.
